Good Omens

August 29, 1990
When a scatterbrained Satanist nun goofs up a baby-switching scheme and delivers the infant Antichrist to the wrong couple, it's just the beginning of the comic errors in the divine plan for Armageddon which this fast-paced novel by two British writers zanily details. Aziraphale, an angel who doubles as a rare-book dealer, and Crowley, a demon friend who's assigned to the same territory, like life on Earth too much to allow the long-planned war between Heaven and Hell to happen. They set out to find the Antichrist and avert Armageddon, on the way encountering the last living descendant of Agnes Nutter, Anathema, who's been deciphering accurate prophecies of the world's doom but is unaware she's living in the same town as the Antichrist, now a thoroughly human and normal 11-year-old named Adam. As the appointed day and hour approach, Aziraphale and Crowley blunder through seas of fire and rains of fish, and come across a misguided witch hunter, a middle-aged fortune teller and the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse. It's up to Adam in the neatly tied end, as his humanity prevails over the Divine Plan and earthly bungling. Some humor is strictly British, but most will appeal even to Americans ``and other aliens.'' Literary Guild alternate.

January 25, 2010
The end of the world is coming, and the portents are everywhere. All is dependent on the anti-Christ—if the agents of good and evil here on Earth can find him. Action-packed with flaming swords and freakish catastrophes, the 20-year-old novel is made even more suspenseful, irreverent, and clever with Martin Jarvis at the helm. Young or old, male or female, angel or demon, human or not, Jarvis’s voices are legion, and his delivery and dramatics make for never a dull moment.